Space Oddities

January 1, 2024
A leading experimental physicist and science presenter examines how new evidence is upsetting old scientific models, ideas, and precepts. "Science does not progress in a straight line, running from ignorance to understanding," writes Cliff, a particle physicist at Cambridge and CERN's Large Hadron Collider. "It is a messy business, full of false starts, wrong turns, and dead ends." Without a doubt, the author has the credentials to explain how physicists are currently confronting a host of new puzzles. Over several decades, a sense of complacency had developed, but in the past few years, a series of anomalies have undermined the old certainties. Why, for example, are stars moving away faster than expected? Why do neutrinos refuse to behave as the theoretical models predict? What are the powerful pulses of energy that occasionally burst through the Antarctic ice? Cliff describes his treks around the world, visiting research facilities and interviewing some of the people hunting for answers. There's an ongoing conflict between the theoreticians, who trust in complex mathematical models, and the observers, who focus on experiments and connections. Both sides show a sense of groping for new paradigms and a novel way of defining reality. One problem with the book is that, despite Cliff's attempts to explain the issues in non-specialist terms, cosmology and particle physics are extremely complex areas, and some sections of the text are difficult to follow. Readers with a background in advanced physics will find plenty of the material fascinating, while general readers are in for a challenge. But Cliff's optimism, light sense of humor, and enthusiasm for his subject shine through: "Nature does not yield its secrets easily; they must be fought for. But in the end...this winding road does inexorably lead to deeper understanding." An authoritative investigation of emerging scientific problems.

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Starred review from January 29, 2024
This superb study by University of Cambridge particle physicist Cliff (How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch) examines contemporary physics’ most intriguing mysteries through profiles of the scientists trying to solve them. Cliff details Italian physicist Linda Cremonesi’s contributions to an Antarctic data collection project that in 2016 discovered unexpected cosmic rays (“charged particles like protons and nuclei”) that appeared to travel upward from the ice, a finding some physicists speculate might result from a subatomic sterile neutrino particle, which can normally pass through matter, losing that ability while moving through the Earth and colliding with the ice on its way out. Cliff also examines Nobel Prize–winner Adam Riess’s ongoing research attempting to resolve why direct and indirect measurements of how fast the universe is expanding don’t match up, and physicist Chris Polly’s efforts to determine whether the unusual magnetic properties of the muon (“an exotic, heavier cousin of the more familiar electron”) are evidence of a quantum field that has yet to discovered. Cliff’s lucid explanations do a remarkable job of making the complicated physics accessible and even exciting, and the focus on the scientists’ stories ensconces the heady ideas in approachable, human narratives. This is a first-rate dispatch from the cutting edge of physics. Agent: Dorian Karchmar, WME.

February 1, 2024
Two big problems beset cosmology. First, the visible universe represents only five percent of the energy content of the cosmos; the rest is so-far-undetected ""dark mass"" and energy. Second, the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating due to an unidentified repulsive force. Particle physicists like Cliff have been investigating these mysteries by pursuing physical anomalies--situations in which an experimental result contradicts theoretical prediction. After recounting some historical anomalies, such as Einstein's relativistic solution of planet Mercury's deviation from Newtonian mechanics, Cliff rolls out several projects dedicated to problems with the standard model of particle physics (mostly an incredibly accurate theory). One project sends a balloon carrying a neutrino detector over Antarctica; another, a muon detector at Fermilab in Illinois; and one is his own research with a gigantic quark detector at CERN in France. In each case, the hope is that new quantum fields or particles will be discovered related to dark matter and energy. So far, nothing, but Cliff captures the rigor required for experiments to produce credible results. Cliff converts complex physics into eminently readable popular science.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2024

A Cambridge University-based particle physicist who pushes the envelope in his work on CERN's Large Hadron Collider, Cliff reveals strange new phenomena--hyper-energized particles beneath the Antarctic ice, unknown forces tugging away at the essentials of matter--that don't fit into our current understanding of physics. Have we reached the end of physics (the title of his TED talk, viewed by nearly three million)? Or are we on the cusp of something new? Prepub Alert.

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